The Poems of A. Pushkin in the Antologia della Poesia Russa Edited by S. Garzonio e G. Carpi (2004): The Choice of Textes, the Choice of Translators

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Introduction

The publication, prepared by renowned slavists Stefano Garzonio and Guido Carpi, is to date the most complete and authoritative anthology of Russian poetry published in Italy (Antologia della poesia russa, 2004)^[1]. The book with parallel texts, in Russian and in Italian, was published in the “Biblioteca della Repubblica” series, intended for a wide range of readers, but it is equipped with a solid critical apparatus: a detailed introductory article introducing the history of Russian poetry (the anthology is divided into chapters – the pre-Petrine era, the 18th century, the Romantic era, etc., right up to the chapter devoted to modern poetry). Each chapter of the anthology, as well as the sections illustrating the work of individual poets, are preceded by introductions with information about the lives of the authors, their affiliation with schools and movements, and the artistic features of their works.

It is important to note that the compilers not only sought to introduce the Italian reader to the canon of Russian poetry, but also to present as fully as possible Italian translators of the past and present. Thus, many translations were made by famous slavists (E. Lo Gatto, A.-M. Ripellino, M. Colucci, etc.), since translation from Russian in Italy is traditionally closely connected with scientific research. At the same time, translations by Italian poets and writers (V. Monti, I. Nievo, T. Landolfi, G. Ungaretti, etc.) are presented, some of whom translated not from Russian, knowledge of which was rare, but from French translations. In a number of cases, the compilers of the anthology gave preference not to modern, but to old translations, reflecting the literary taste of the era.

The section dedicated to A.S. Pushkin (pp. 254–287) opens with an introduction by G. Carpi. The selection includes ten poems (Prorok (The Prothet), Ya pomnyu chudnoe mgnovenie… (Iremember a wonderful moment…), Zimnii vecher (A winter evening), Na kholmakh Gruzii lezhit nochnaya mgla… (The night mist lies on the hills of Georgia…), etc.), as well as excerpts from poems Evgenyi Onegin (Eugene Onegin) and Mednyi vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman). The translations are by M. Ricci, A. Canini, E. Lo Gatto, T. Landolfi, S. Morski and M. Colucci. We will dwell in detail on the translations of three texts that illustrate different translation strategies.

Results and Discussion

The poem Prorok is given in the translation of Count Miniato Ricci (1792–1860/1877), an original poet, married to E.P. Lunina; Ricci was Pushkin’s acquaintance in St. Petersburg and his first Italian translator. It is known that Ricci has translated two of Pushkin’s poems – Demon and Prorok, and was also going to translate scenes from Boris Godunov and other works. In 1828, he approached G.P. Vieisseux, the editor of the authoritative Florentine magazine L’Antologia, with a request to publish his notes on Russian literature and translations of poems by Derzhavin, Venevitinov, Zhukovsky and Pushkin, but was refused and soon abandoned his work as a translator, although S.P. Shevyrev spoke positively of his abilities. Ricci’s translations, like other early translations of Pushkin in Italy, have been studied in detail by Claudia Lasorsa, whose work we will rely on (Lasorsa, 1970; 2009). Here are the first lines of the poem and the translation:

Ricci renders iambic tetrameter in eleven-syllable verse (endecasillabo) with cross rhymes, without preserving the rhyme scheme or the alternation of masculine and feminine endings. The eleven-syllable meter is the most popular meter of Italian poetry, quite flexible and rhythmically diverse, suitable for poems of the most varied styles and themes. As for rhyme, at that time Italian poetry was already beginning to abandon it, in any case, it was not assumed that the translator was obliged to reproduce it exactly. Characterizing the vocabulary and style, Lasorsa notes: “Ricci’s translation is free and at the same time faithful in every verse. <…> In his literary tastes, Ricci probably adhered to the neoclassicism of the second half of the 18th century with an admixture of some lyricism in the romantic spirit. <…> the solemn “high style” corresponds to the Italian latinized syllable. Since archaization relies simultaneously on syntax and latinized vocabulary, the translator managed to achieve great expressiveness” (Lasorsa, 1970, p. 96).

Ricci makes abundant use of lexical and grammatical archaisms (mi traeva, sei volte alato, tanger, il gir, et, vide et audi, da tue verba и др.), separated forms of prepositions and definite articles (de gli instead of degli), enclitic verb forms characteristic of the high style (spalancaronsi, riempielle, fèsi, fendèmi), inversion of the definition of a noun, archaic form of the imperfect (mi traeva), which at that time was already gradually falling out of use, truncated forms of words (allor, Serafin) and outdated variants (guardo instead of sguardo, veggenti instead of vedenti). Pushkin’s verse is conveyed in the language of solemn, noticeably archaic high Italian poetry^[2]. As Lasorsa notes, Ricci produces a precise and concise translation, in which the division into semantic segments coincides with Pushkin’s. The following detail also speaks to the translator’s skill: to emphasize the feminine gender of the word orlitsa (eagle) (in Italian the word acquila also denotes the male), he adds sul nido (sitting on the nest) (Lasorsa, 2009, p. 256). The merits of Ricci’s translation are obvious when compared with the translation of the same poem by L. De Manzini, published in 1844: in the second case, the translator did not at all strive to convey the high biblical style, but resorted to the most banal linguistic solutions, to hackneyed rhymes, the result being a very mediocre text, stuffed with poetic cliches (Lasorsa, 2009, pp. 243–244).

The poem Ya vas lyubil... (I loved you…) is presented in the anthology in the translation of Antonio Canini (1822–1891). Little is known about him: due to his political views, Canini who was Garibaldi’s follower, had to leave Italy, he lived in the Balkans, in Romania, in Paris; he was a correspondent for the Turin newspaper Opinione during the Crimean War; he read in several Slavic languages; he is the compiler and translator of an anthology of love poetry (Il libro dell’amore, poesie italiane e straniere raccolte, Venezia, 1885), however he is not famous as translator of the Russian poetry.

This is an example of a free translation, typical of the 19th century; this is noticeable to the eye due to the difference in the number of verses. Iambic pentameter with cross rhyme and alternating masculine and feminine endings is rendered in Italian in lines of varying length, mostly in heptasyllabics (settenario), with only individual words rhymed (amor – ancor, parlar – tormentar, non v’ha – t’amerà). If you write the poem differently, merging the lines, you can get the rhyme scheme AABBCC, which still does not correspond to Pushkin’s ABABCDCD scheme. Like in the Ricci’s translation, the language of the translation contains elements characteristic of the Italian poetic language of that period. For example, truncated forms of words (solean, parlar, sincer), archaic lexical and grammatical variants (speme instead of speranza, vo instead of voglio). But the main thing is that Pushkin’s poem essentially turns into a song, a love romance, even the formal address to the lady vy is replaced by a more intimate address tu, in addition, a direct address to the addressee o donna appears. In the translation, the semantic accents are shifted, the folkloric coloring is noticeable, the author seems to reformulate Pushkin’s thoughts, banalizing them, reducing them to a song template (for example, in the last lines: Dio lo voglia, ma nessuno / Così forte t’amerà means literally God’s will be done, but no one will love you as much; To robost’yu, to revnost’yu tomim in translated as E solean timidezza / Gelosia me tormentar, lit. Shyness and jealousy often tormented me). The charm of Pushkin’s poem, the halftones, the shades of feelings, the enchanting softness disappear.

An excerpt from the poem Mednyi Vsadnik is given in the translation by Michele Colucci (1937–2002), an outstanding slavist, author of fundamental scientific works, a prolific translator, including the translations of the poetry by A. Akhmatova and E. Baratynsky. His translations are a brilliant example of the combination of a conscious, philological approach, combined with literary talent.

The iambic tetrameter is rendered, as in the first case, by an eleven-syllable meter. In an article devoted to the problems of translating Russian poetry and understanding his own translation experience, Colucci emphasizes that Italians are forced to lengthen the line due to differences in the grammatical structure of the two languages – synthetic and analytical (in Italian there is an article, there are auxiliary verbs, and instead of participles and adverbial participles, subordinate clauses are usually used) (Colucci, 1993, p. 115). Moreover, unlike, for example, R. Poggioli, who preserved rhyme in his translations of Russian poetry, Colucci, like the overwhelming majority of modern translators, believed that rhyme should not be preserved, since it disappeared in Italian poetry back in the era of romanticism and is now found mainly in poems for children (see about Poggioli’s translations and their reception (Niero, 2019, pp. 107–183). It should be noted that in Colucci’s translation, as in Pushkin’s original text, enjambment is quite common: the text seems to flow from line to line, obeying the impulse of the narrative, while the close semantic connection can be broken (for example, pieno / di alti pensieri, guardava/lontano).

Unlike the previous examples, this translation lacks obvious archaisms, the choice was made in favor of a neutral literary language, however, far from colloquial. For example, the personal pronoun on is rendered by the pronoun egli (but not lui), characteristic of written speech. The choice of lexis indicates an attempt to avoid comments and make the text as clear as possible for the reader. For example, the word izby, which in Italian is most often rendered as izbe, is translated here as cappannucce (lit. huts, poor little houses). Priyut ubogogo chukhontsa is translated as asilo miserabile di finni: the translator changes the name of the people to the Finns known to the Italian reader, and also applies the word miserabile (lit. poor, primitive) to the dwelling, and not to its inhabitant. In general, it can be said that Colucci consciously refuses to try to archaize the text, to stylize it as if it were from the 19th century, to write “like Manzoni” or “like Leopardi”, because, in his opinion, in that case the translation would turn out lifeless, like a dummy (Colucci, 1993, p. 113). It should be taken into account that in Italy modern poetry is mainly written in free verse, so the presence of a clear metric organization in combination with a refined literary language in itself creates an effect of archaization.

In his article on translating Russian poetry, Colucci also speaks of the need to convey the sound of a poem, its timbre, admitting that due to the difference between languages this is almost impossible. Nevertheless, the desire to solve this problem is also noticeable in the passage under analysis: see, for example, the description of the rustling forest in the last three lines, which is replete with consonant sounds (s, ch, sh), as well as the energetic “r” (krugom shumel – tutto intorno stormiva).

The texts examined illustrate three fundamentally different approaches to translating Pushkin’s poetry. In the past and in our days, the great Russian classic has been translated a lot in Italy: it is enough to recall the recent translations of Evgenii Onegin by G. Giudici, P. Pera and G. Ghini, which have aroused great interest among readers and literary scholars. The difficulties of translating Pushkin’s poem and, in general, poetic texts that can be classified as “cult” (all three poems considered above rightfully belong to this category) are the subject of L. Salmon Kovarski’s article (Kovarski, 2001); Evgenii Onegin is also the subject of a chapter from A. Niero’s monograph, where old and new translations of the poem are examined in detail, especially the issues of versification (Niero, 2019, pp. 245–278). As Niero notes, the difficulty of reproducing Pushkin’s poetry in Italian is largely due to the fact that there is no Italian poet analogous to Pushkin, whose style translators could use as a reference. For example, the poems of Joseph Brodsky were translated in the style of Eugenio Montale, an outstanding poet of the 20th century. This not only simplified the task for the translators, but also partly determined Brodsky’s success with the Italian reader.

Conclusion

Thus, the anthology compiled by Garzonio and Carpi represents the most useful tool not only for the Italian reader who wants to get acquainted with Russian poetry in its historical development, but also for the researcher of translation. The texts collected in it reflect various stages in the history of poetic translation from Russian into Italian, illustrate different, often opposing approaches, and allow us to evaluate the contribution of the most talented translators.

^{1 The texts of the poems in the original and in translation are given according to (2004). Antologia della poesia russa. A cura di Stefano Garzonio e Guido Carpi. Roma: La Repubblica.}

^{2 The specific language of Italian poetry, its grammatical and lexical features, as well as its historical evolution are described in the monograph by L. Serianni: Serianni, L. (2001). Introduzione alla Lingua Poetica Italiana. Roma: Carocci.}

About the authors

Anna Vl. Jampolskaja

Author for correspondence.
Email: khomkins@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9900-9256
SPIN-code: 4873-9740

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor at the Department of Literary Translation

References

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